What came first, the plaque or the damaged neuron?

Darkfrog submitted, created time 9 months 1 week (www.nature.com)

By using cranial window surgery in lab mice, researchers from Harvard Medical have managed to figure out whether it is the neuron damage that causes (or at least precedes) the plaque in Alzheimer's patients or the other way around.

The results imply that it is the plaques that cause microglial accumulation, and that the microglia restrain the growth of these plaques.

The part that seems most interesting to me is the speed at which the plaques form. Very rarely do discussions of the studies talk about the speed

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Heart Disease May Be Reduced By Enzyme CEH

june submitted, created time 1 year 3 weeks (www.medicalnewstoday.com)

Virginia Commonwealth University researchers have identified the role of a key enzyme called CEH in reducing heart disease, paving the way for new target therapies to reduce plaques in the arteries and perhaps in the future, help predict a patient's susceptibility to heart disease.

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Human C-reactive protein slows atherosclerosis development in a mouse model with human-like hypercholesterolemia

jiangyun submitted, created time 1 year 2 months (www.pnas.org)

Increased baseline values of the acute-phase reactant C-reactive protein (CRP) are significantly associated with future cardiovascular disease, and some in vitro studies have claimed that human CRP (hCRP) has proatherogenic effects. in vivo studies in apolipoprotein E-deficient mouse models, however, have given conflicting results. We bred atherosclerosis-prone mice (Apob100/100Ldlr–/–), which have human-like hypercholesterolemia, with hCRP transgenic mice (hCRP+/0) and studied lesion development at 15, 30, 40, and 50 weeks of age

Submit comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: acute-phase protein apolipoprotein B100 coronary artery disease low-density lipoprotein plaques